Yet they won't take up the $200,000 file sharing case, even though the record companies lost their right to protection after the first sale of the music.
Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
51–60 of 217 posts
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#52I'm glad, obviously. You should be able to do whatever you want with something after you purchase it. But it just makes me sad this had to get to the Supreme Court.
> But it just makes me sad this had to get to the Supreme Court. Not being a lawyer, isn't this the best result possible for consumers in terms of establishing precedent?
It is, the part that makes me sad is we had to set the precedent in the first place. It's good that a precedent has been set but it's ridiculous there was ever a lawsuit over reselling a book.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#53I'm glad, obviously. You should be able to do whatever you want with something after you purchase it. But it just makes me sad this had to get to the Supreme Court.
Honest question: What if the good was only sold to you with a particular assumption? For example, if a phone company sells me a smartphone with the agreement that I do not unlock the phone, should I still be able to do whatever I want with the phone (unlock it) after it is in my possession?
I'm not the GP, but yes. As long as you were willing to break that agreement and take on any penalties incurred. If the device is yours, you can smash it on the ground even if the agreement prohibits it. However, you've now broken the agreement and there may be a fee or some other penalty.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#54The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition. In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lectu…
I am a lecturer in a math department. I also despise the textbook industry. Would you please recommend what I might do, subject to severe limitations of (1) time and (2) political clout within my department?
First, unless you are in a very specialized field, there are surely several books that cover the topic you are lecturing. In the interest of politics have an official book, but in the interest of time offer alternatives. Your students, or the good ones, at least, will be able to use whatever book they can fit in their budget, including previous editions. Especially if you're teaching calculus.
Second, if you are grading homework then produce your own problem sets. You already have to do this for exams, which means you know what you expect your students to learn, so you may as well produce the problem sets as well. At the very least indicate what types of problems a student should practice on so they can follow along in the book they do have.
Third, thank you for lecturing. I know that lecturers hate the raw deal with textbooks as well.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#55The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition. In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lectu…
I am a lecturer in a math department. I also despise the textbook industry. Would you please recommend what I might do, subject to severe limitations of (1) time and (2) political clout within my department?
Tell your students not to purchase whatever books the department head has been bribed into using in the coming semester. Instead, spend a few hours curating online resources that may serve as notes for students; better yet, just photocopy the handwritten notes that every mathematics teacher I've ever had seems to have for each lecture they give :-) Otherwise, Paul's Online Math Notes tackles Calculus and ODEs, and IIRC gives an intro to PDEs as well. The students collectively save thousands of dollars in exchange for a few hours of your time spent photocopying notes or otherwise googling for a resource that you approve of.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#56Excellent for the native textbook industries of these countries.
But not necessarily for the students in those countries. Presumably low-cost and market-recognized quality are factors that have kept American textbooks in distribution in foreign markets (and domestic producers out of those markets). In their absence, one might think that prices will rise, quality will fall, or both; at least in the short run. If these countries are relatively free of government collusion with estab…
Alternatively, it's possible the American publishers wer effectively "dumping" their textbooks to prevent international publishers from ever being able to establish themselves.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a prof who wrote his own textbook and it was one of the best I ever had. It was sold at a little more than cost, so he made like $1 from each of us. It all depends on the prof and the content.
My biology prof did this, with the exception that she had written a workbook and our homework was filled out on the pages. This meant we were paying for paper to turn our homework in on and the book was unable to be sold back.
Departments do do that - usually because they are short of funds and the money raised is used to fund consumables for lab classes. The university cannot raise a surcharge for certain classes, but they can sell equipment (read: course workbook) for that class. It's iffy, but still on this side of fine, no one makes a profit of it.
There is no excuse, though, for having to sign up for an account with a commercial publisher for exercises that are a part of your grade in that class. Normally you would pay a bunch of TAs to administer and grade the tests, but the university is too short of funds for that. So they outsource the grading to a commercial entity.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#58The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition. In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lectu…
The worst offenders are the professors who write their own textbooks (even though there are dozens of better ones already available) and then use them in their courses, making money off each student. Maybe there should be conflict of interest rules in universities. The heroes in this game are the instructors who are creating open-source textbooks.
Isn’t it quite common nowadays for lecturers to just type up their lecture notes and make them available online (for free, obviously)? At least that’s what happened at the last two universities I attended, with other lecturers in the same department possibly reusing said notes. A few of such notes even made it to arXiv.
Of course, they will still suggest looking at some textbooks, but only on the rare occasion that they don’t want to include a proof or more information in the notes themselves - and then these books are naturally available in the library’s reference holdings.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#59The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition. In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lectu…
The worst offenders are the professors who write their own textbooks (even though there are dozens of better ones already available) and then use them in their courses, making money off each student. Maybe there should be conflict of interest rules in universities. The heroes in this game are the instructors who are creating open-source textbooks.
My university had a rule that textbooks written by the instructor had to be provided at cost. The instructor had hard copies available from the local print shop.
In another case, our professor contacted the author of the book and got cheap locally printed and bound copies. Something like $15 vs. $180.
Re: Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks
#60I'm glad, obviously. You should be able to do whatever you want with something after you purchase it. But it just makes me sad this had to get to the Supreme Court.
Honest question: What if the good was only sold to you with a particular assumption? For example, if a phone company sells me a smartphone with the agreement that I do not unlock the phone, should I still be able to do whatever I want with the phone (unlock it) after it is in my possession?
> What if the good was only sold to you with a particular assumption?
Then you specify that assumption and the penalties for breaking it in a contract, which both parties sign. That's why I find the phone unlocking thing so baffling--you're already under contract, why do the carriers care if you unlock your phone so long as you don't violate the terms of the contract?